Annette Kuhn

The power of the image : essays on representation and sexuality

Analyses a wide range of film and still photographs to explore culturally dominant images and how they work. Extensively illustrated, this challenging collection of essays is essential reading for all students of media and womens studies.

Feminism and materialism : women and modes of production

Preface. Notes on contributors. 1. Feminism and Annette Kuhn and AnnMarie Wolpe 2. Patriarchy and relations of production Roisin McDonough and Rachel Harrison 3. Structures of patriarchy and capital in the family Annette Kuhn 4. Church, state, and family: the womens movement in Italy Lesley Caldwell 5. Sexual division of labour: the case of nursing Eva Gamarnikow 6. Modes of appropriation and the sexual division of labour: a case study from Oaxaca, Mexico Kate Young 7. Women and production: a critical analysis of some sociological theories of womens work Veronica Beechey 8. Domestic labour and Marxs theory of value Paul Smith 9. Women, sex and class Jackie West 10. The state and the oppression of women Mary McIntosh 11. Education and the sexual division of labour AnnMarie Wolpe

Memory texts and memory work: Performances of memory in and with visual media

This essay focuses on re-enactments of the past through performances of memory both in and with visual media, and looks at how these may embody, express, work through, and even unpick, interconnections between the private, the public and the personal. It explores some questions around visual media/visual discourses, memory and collective identity by looking at filmic and photographic examples from England, Scotland, Canada and China. It also raises some questions around appropriate research methodologies and about how institutions such as museums and archives may figure in some of these collective activities, practices and performances.

Photography and cultural memory: a methodological exploration

Recent years have seen a flowering of research and scholarship on cultural memory across the humanities and social sciences. Among the many facets of this work is a quest to extend and deepen understanding of how personal memory operates in the cultural sphere: its distinguishing features; how, where and when it is produced; how people make use of it in their daily lives; how personal or individual memory connects with shared, public forms of memory; and ultimately, how memory figures in, and even shapes, the social body and social worlds. Personal and family photographs figure importantly in cultural memory, and memory work with photographs offers a particularly productive route to understanding the social and cultural aspects of memory. Beginning with a study of one photograph, this article develops and interrogates a set of interlocking memory work methods for investigating the forms and everyday uses of ‘ordinary photography’ and how these figure in the production of memory.

Family size and ordinal position: correlates of academic success.

The National Survey of 1960 Graduates, which included every woman and every other man who graduated from British universities in 1960, provided a unique opportunity to further our knowledge of the correlates of academic success measured in terms of the gaining of a university degree. A relatively large family appeared to be no impediment to the educational achievements of middle-class children, but for those with less privileged home circumstances a small family was an essential ingredient for success. First-born children were over-represented among this sample, though only children were not particularly favoured. In general, the likelihood of graduation appeared to decrease with each later position in the birth order.

Cinema-going in Britain in the 1930s: Report of a Questionnaire Survey

(1999). Cinema-going in Britain in the 1930s: Report of a Questionnaire Survey. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television: Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 531-543.

The Trouble With Elinor Glyn: Hollywood, Three Weeks And The British Board Of Film Censors

A century ago, a London publisher brought out a romantic novel called Three Weeks, a book that prompted a scandal that was to reverberate for almost 30 years. Three Weeks is the tale of a brief love affair between Paul Verdayne, an aristocratic young man, and a mysterious ‘queen-like’ older woman, a ‘lady in black’ from an unnamed far-off country, who ‘illuminated [the young] man’s soul, and drew it on to noble things’. While the story of the romance is told in the tasteful, if sometimes overblown, style characteristic of romantic writing of its period, looked at today it is not at all difficult to see why Three Weeks caused such upset (it was apparently even banned at Eton). The plot on its own was challenging enough: aside from the age difference between the two protagonists, it is the woman who initiates the relationship and guides her younger lover through his sentimental education. But it is the way the story is told, that made (and in many ways continues to make) the novel exceptional. In the first place, the settings—the decor, the clothes, and so on—are described in the fullest detail and offer the most extraordinarily rich evocation of the sensuousness and tactility of furnishings, textiles, and such. In the book’s most famous scene, Paul is summoned to the lady’s rooms for the first time. Here he finds her reclining on a tiger-skin rug, wearing ‘some strange clinging garment of heavy purple crepe, its hem embroidered with gold, one white arm resting on the beast’s head’. While updated versions of passages of this kind might be familiar enough to readers of today’s ‘sex and shopping’ sagas, it is perhaps not the sort of thing one would normally expect to find in romantic fiction written in the early years of the last century. Also, Three Weeks is comparatively heavy on mise-en-scène and light on action.

Memories of cinemagoing and film experience: An introduction:

Over the past two decades, the relationship between cinema and memory has been the object of increasing academic attention, with growing interest in film and cinema as repositories for representing, shaping, (re)creating or indexing forms of individual and collective memory. This Special Issue on memory and the experience of cinemagoing centres on the perspective of cinema users and audiences, focusing on memories of films, cinema and cinemagoing from three continents and over five decades of the twentieth century. This introduction considers the relationship between memory studies and film studies, sets out an overview of the origins of, and recent and current shifts and trends within, research and scholarship at the interface between historical film audiences, the cinemagoing experience and memory; and presents the articles and reviews which follow within this frame. It considers some of the methodological issues raised by research in these areas and concludes by looking at some of the challenges facing future work in the field.

Marriage and Family-Building Patterns of University Graduates

In October 1966 every woman and every other man who had graduated from a British university in 1960 was sent a questionnaire requesting information on certain aspects of his or her background university career and studies and employment between first graduation and October 1 1966. Also included were questions on marriage partners and children and some special questions for women. The findings showed that highly educated people are on the whole no exception to the generally observed principle of social and educational endogamy. Those from working class homes however marry overwhelmingly into the middle class. Respondents generally tended to delay marriage and family building while still engaged in full-time study but more graduates are ultimately marrying and at younger ages. Interesting sex differences have also been found and discussed. Educated women are far more likely to delay marriage and childbearing than their male counterparts.

Film at the border: Memories of cinemagoing in Laredo, Texas

This article addresses the memories of 28 filmgoers between the ages of 64 and 95 in Laredo, Texas – a city located on the border between the United States and Mexico. It explores respondents’ memories of US and Mexican films, actors and local venues against the historical background of a fluid and complex border. In particular, it examines the negotiation of cultural identities among residents with strong connections to Mexican heritage but who are also influenced by the structural characteristics of the American political, economic and educational systems.